Discord celebrates its third anniversary with a Fortnite-fueled update

The game-centric chat sofware Discord recently celebrated its third anniversary with an infographic marking tremendous growth since its last birthday, and an update that makes room for further growth in the future through better optimization, less data usage, and the ability for large servers to grow even larger.

First, a spot of trivia: Discord currently has 130 million registered users, up from 45 million last year, and 19 million daily users, more than double last year's count of 8.9 million. The peak concurrent user number is also way up, from 4 million in 2017 to 8.2 million as of the third birthday. There are 858 verified servers currently available, the largest of them being—brace yourselves—Fortnite, with 180,000 users.

More Fortnite

This leads smoothly into the most recent update, which includes a tip of the hat to Fortnite. CPU and network usage will now be "about the same" no matter the size of the server, and it uses less data and battery power (on iOS devices—Android improvements are "imminent") than it did previously.

Screensharing now includes audio support, which is a big addition ("Your friends can yell at your to kill the Genji behind you"), and "large Discord servers can now grow much larger." The update doesn't include specific numbers, but notes, "This one's for you, Fortnite."

The full update notes, which also cover smaller changes like tweaks to the Discord dark theme, are up at discordapp.com. The obligatory anniversary infographic is below.

Andy covers the day-to-day happenings in the big, wide world of PC gaming—the stuff we call "news." In his off hours, he wishes he had time to play the 80-hour RPGs and immersive sims he used to love so much.